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From pop to prof - and talent-spotted by Danny Boyle: the complex world of Brian Cox

Brian Cox is one of the most recognisable scientists in the country and it turns out he helped out on Danny Boyle's science-fiction film Sunshine. Now they are reuniting on stage in a festival of ideas in Mile End this weekend

So it turns out it was the film director Danny Boyle who talent-spotted Brian Cox. Way back in 2006, a good few years before the BBC realised that the smiley physics professor from Oldham would make a charismatic front man for the solar system, Boyle was making his science fiction film, Sunshine. He clocked Cox when he was still just an ex-keyboard player from D:Ream, scratching a living as part of Manchester University High Energy Research team at the CERN facility in Switzerland.

“The premise of Sunshine is that the best of the best scientists in the world are on a mission to the sun to save humanity,” explains Cox. “He wanted to find a way of connecting his young actors to young scientists and astronauts. He saw me on Horizon, being interviewed about the Large Hadron Collider. I guess he thought I was young, approachable, seemed to know my stuff… you know — vaguely human.”

All the qualities that have since made Cox, now 45, one of the most recognisable scientists in the country, in fact. Cox ended up providing “the intellectual background” to the film, hanging out with Boyle and actor Cillian Murphy at CERN, and submitting to their interrogation.

“It was almost like psychoanalysis,” he recalls. “Sunshine is all about whether humans should seek to be masters of nature. That had quite a big effect on me. Way back then, I was just doing lab work, so I hadn’t really thought about these things. It had quite a big effect on what I went on to do next.”

Cox will be reuniting with Boyle onstage to discuss man’s insatiable desire to mess with the universe at a screening of Sunshine next week. It’s a highlight of Shuffle, a week-long festival of arts, science and ideas that Boyle is curating in the East End — and part of Cox’s commitment to transfer his enthusiasm for physics to a hungry new audience.

Still, I wonder whether he looks back on those days when he was the Jesse Pinkman of the whole CERN thing with something like nostalgia. Cox is now firmly established in the BBC canopy. His lavish productions, like The Wonders of the Universe, provide that sense of Sunday awe that we used to associate with people like Jesus and Sir David Attenborough. Indeed, Cox’s most recent series, The Wonders of Life (inspired by Schrodinger’s 1944 book What Is Life?) strayed into Attenborough territory, and even featured leopards.

When I ask whether he finds it distracting being a celebrity, he says “yes” without pause. However, he points out that most scientists of his age miss their young days in the lab too. “Some way or another, you end up with more responsibility.”

In other words, if he wasn’t mooching around lava lakes in Ethiopia, nattering about the volcanoes of Io, he’d spend his days filling out forms for research grants and telling freshers to stop smoking weed. Anyway, he still teaches Quantum Mechanics and Relativity to first years at Manchester. “I love doing it. It’s almost the opposite of doing television, where you’re giving an exciting snapshot of the science — teaching first years, every single term in every single equation matters. You have to be very methodical.”

He already has left a mark on the younger generation of physicists. A professor friend of mine related a story from a class she was teaching on time in thermal physics. After she set out the various theories and counter-theories, one of her students objected: “Many of these positions can’t be right because Professor Brian Cox says that time will definitely end in the heat death of the universe!” She found this a bit irritating — not least as no student ever referred to her university’s professoriat as “Professor”.

“Well it will end in the heat death of the universe!” he laughs when I relay the tale. “The ideas of heat death have got a fascinating history, but it depends on whether you’re talking of the current best estimate of what’s going to happen or the history of the idea, I suppose.”

And now I feel I’m getting out of my depth, ie out of the paddling pool. Still, he takes the general point. “You should always worry that you are simplifying these things on television, but I actually think that there’s an appropriate creative tension. I mean, I could televise my undergraduate lectures. Who would want to watch that?”

He sees the purpose of his TV shows as “transferring the excitement of intellectual ideas” to the biggest audience that he can. “Some people bemoan the fact that you have to simplify the ideas; we see it is making the idea intelligible to a non-scientific audience.”

He says the wider physics community recognise the need for “public-facing” scientists. And if he inspires a generation to study physics at university — where they will have no choice but to learn rigour — then so much the better. “The political challenge is that we need a million more scientists and engineers in the economy by 2020. We’re not educating enough people to sustain our biggest companies.”

In fact, Cox proves an eloquent defender of the British university system. “It is one of our great national assets. It would be impossible for any other country to replicate it. We’re talking about 1,000 years that have gone into building it — but it’s extremely easy to damage it.”

He says that the Government’s commitment to science funding through austerity has been a “reasonable statement of intent”. However, he has serious misgivings about the decision to treble tuition fees.

“We need to wait for the research, but anecdotally, I think it has discouraged students from poorer backgrounds. I worry about that. Students who go through higher education make a net positive contribution to society in pure cash terms — quite aside from their cultural contribution. Investment in the young is something that is logical and sensible.”

If it were down to him, he’d bring back grants. “It’s in the interests of the country. I would invest in knowledge, education and the young.” Vote Cox!

As for TV, he is currently making a series called the Human Universe, due in the New Year. “It’s back to cosmology again,” he says. “It’s about man’s exploration of the universe — so there’s an ascent of man element to it. It’s also asking questions such as: ‘Why don’t we see any evidence of other civilisations?’”

He’s wigged out by recent data from the Kepler telescope which suggests there are 20 billion temperate, rocky planets in our galaxy. “That’s a huge number of possible second Earths! But something like one in five stars has an Earth-like planet round it. So now the challenge is to look at them in detail.”

Annoyingly, the closest one is about 10-20 light years away, quite close in astronomical terms but about 200 years away with current technology. If only we could make some kind of fuel cell out of Cox’s enthusiasm.

“We could send out robot explorers there!” he says, becoming all boyish again. “Why not? We built cathedrals once. We used to create things for future generations.”

The Winter Shuffle is a 10-day festival curated by film director Danny Boyle (shufflefestival.com, starts today). Held at St Clement’s — a disused former psychiatric hospital in Mile End — Shuffle features film screenings, Q&As with dapper experts including Jarvis Cocker, live music, comedy, theatre, art, food and mulled wine (obvs). Boyle consulted Professor Brian Cox on all matters scientific while he was creating sci-fi flick Sunshine. Here are some Shuffle sci-highs:

Professor Bri’s sci-fi highs

Saturday 7th

CHILDREN OF MEN

A screening of the dystopian movie, followed by a discussion and Q&A about single-sex reproduction.